Friday, August 08, 2008

In honor of the 34th anniversary of the resignation of President Richard Nixon, forced out by public disclosure of his disdain for the rule of law, the Accountability Now PAC/Strangebellows campaign is gathering a "moneybomb"* today. They are collecting funds for a populist campaign, in the words of Glenn Greenwald to work for:

...the preservation of core Constitutional principles, civil liberties, basic accountability, and to undermin[e] and remov[e] from power those who enable the assault on those principles.

Given the inevitability of Democratic control of Congress for the foreseeable future, our campaign has thus far focused, and will continue to focus, on those incumbent members of Congress who, through both their active complicity and craven capitulation, ensure that there is no real "opposition party" standing against any of these assaults.

As I explored last month, putting together a serious campaign to impede the national surveillance state is going to require some reconfiguring of the political landscape. Neither existing parties nor existing politicians value preserving privacy and legality in the context of cheap and easy technological assess to universal spying. And that goes for both our aspiring Presidents too.

I gave to the Strangebedfellows campaign this morning and urge others to do so, even if you run across this entry after the August 8 "moneybomb." Rolling back the national surveillance state is going to be a long haul.

*A "moneybomb" is the tactic of aggregating donations on one day to maximize the sense of mass community involvement in a campaign distributed across the net.

UPDATE: As of 8:20 am, Saturday August 9, this effort had raised almost $150,000. A good start.

What is this blog for?

This San Francisco purveyor of graffiti has it right. When times are bleak -- when country and planet sink under the barely restrained sway of greed, raw power, and fear -- it's time to restate what matters.

I write here to preserve and kindle hope for a national and global turn toward multi-racial, economically egalitarian, gender non-constricting, woman affirming, and peace choosing democracy that preserves the habitability of earth for all. There's a big order -- but what else is there to do but struggle for this? Not much.

Topics range from the minuscule to the transcendent to the global, from dire to delightful. I am not an optimist, but I refuse to allow myself to wallow within the easy bias that everything is going to always be awful. Good also happens; love lives too.

I've been yammering here about activism, politics, history, racism and other occasional horrors and pleasures since 2005. I intend to continue as long as the opportunity exists. In this time, that means activism and chronicling resistance. Perhaps it always has, one way and another.

About Me

I'm a progressive political activist who runs trails and climbs mountains whenever any are available. I've had the privilege to work for justice in Central America (Nicaragua and El Salvador), in South Africa, in the fields of California with the United Farmworkers Union, and in the cities and schools of my own country. I'm a Christian of the Episcopalian flavor; we think and argue a lot. For work, I've done a bit of it all: run an old fashioned switch-board; remodeled buildings and poured concrete; edited and published periodicals, reports and books; and organized for electoral campaigns. Will work for justice.